


Fool Me Once

by Everlind



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb/Sgrub Sessions, Archived From Everlind Blog, Archived From Tumblr, M/M, Trolls Have Conquered Earth, Trolls on Earth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-14 12:59:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16913292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Everlind/pseuds/Everlind
Summary: You start, look to your left and there he is. All elbows and knees, hair like a bird’s nest, sly smiling. There’s no way you’re not noticing that half translucent skin, the blue-not-blue running in clears streaks like fucking targets. With effort, you drag your eyes up to his face. He grins wider.Smooth, Karkat, you groan inwardly.





	Fool Me Once

Pale skin, scruffy clothes, blue eyes. Human. Your eyes catch and stumble, but he’s already lost in the busy throng of the market. There’s no reason for you to come to a complete stop, but you do, skimming the crowd.

Gone. A beefy rustblood nearly knocks into you into a cart with de-spined slimeslugs. “Walk much?” she sneers.

You bare your fangs on reflex. It’s merely the usual polite half-distracted scorn twaddle, because she moves on and you turn toward the cart.

“Wow, what was her problem huh?”

You start, look to your left and there he is. All elbows and knees, hair like a bird’s nest, sly smiling. There’s no way you’re not noticing that half translucent skin, the blue-not-blue running in clears streaks like fucking targets. With effort, you drag your eyes up to his face. He grins wider.

_Smooth, Karkat_ , you groan inwardly.

“You don’t look from around here,” he says, winking.

It’s one of the stalest pick-up lines in the pitch book. A quip about conquering Earth is in your camp, but he’s standing there, glowing in the red wash of the sun’s fading light, all bare-throated and human fragile, with only a single sinkhole of a quadrant accounted for.

“Yeah, and I suppose someone like  _you_  would know all about that, huh?” you sneer, eyes lingering over ragged hems of his jacket, his untagged ears and sharp, hungry face.

“I do actually,” he retorts. “What’s the moirail of the Grand Highblood-in-waiting looking for in the slum district, hm? I’m betting it’s not to buy a quad of slimeslugs.” He gestures at the cart.

“How d—“ you begin, and swallow the rest back down like a mouthful of acid. Too late, the other guy’s smiling so brightly all his flat useless cud-chowing teeth are on display.

“Ah!” he taps the side of his nose. “I have my ways. Also the pin in your lapel, dumbass.”

Fuck. You look down, hands moving up to tuck it back out of sight but it  _is_ , still meticulously hidden away under the gray silk tie. How—?

“Hehe,” he winks again. His irises are the purest indigo you’ve ever seen, even on a goddammed highblood. Weird. “So mister moirail, maybe I could help you find what you’re looking for? I know my way… around.” His eyes sweep you up and down, linger.

Is. Is this guy flirting with you? You don’t even know if he is, but it’s working, why is it working? And then, right on the heels of that, understanding slamming into your pan like rail runner: an pretty thing like him willingly approaching  _you_ , a troll? Hah. Not even in your dreams. Although… he doesn’t seem dressed like a conciliatory hire and he’s a bit too tall and rangy, most trolls like ‘em smaller and softer than that. Still really attractive though.

Damn it. Yeah, there’s no way, just no fucking way, he’s just messing with you. Rage and humiliation helps wash away the tingling, naive warmth already high up enough to warm your cheeks. Enough of this bullshit.

“Something you wanted?” you snarl, allowing your vocal box to thrum a subsonic warning at him; back off unless you have a cull wish, runt. He’s untagged, unowned, unwanted, worthless,  _human_ , nobody would care if you clawed open his bowels like hatching day present.

The idiot just continues to smile at you, aggressively amiable, like he’s perfectly aware of that, but isn’t worried at all, the cocky pink shit. Or maybe he’s just fucked in the pan, it happens sometimes. “Maybe,” he answers. He’s close. When did he get so close? Quirks an eyebrow. “Depends on what  _you_  want,” he offers.

The words fall like hot lumps of carbonized vegetable matter into your gut, and you have to swallow before you can answer. “You’re really forward, aren’t you.”

He grins, and it’s not altogether nice. “You have no idea,” he breathes, touching blunt-nailed fingers to the side of your jaw and leaning in. His mouth is fever hot, mammal warm and sultry, he’s kissing you full on the mouth, steady and firm, with just enough catch at the sweet inside of his lips to make your bloodplusher beat hard around the sudden surge of sheer, flushed wanting.

It’s been so long since you were touched like this.

You kiss him back, make a little noise you didn’t mean to make, reach for his face— only to find he’s slipping through your fingers, stepping back, stepping away. You get a glimpse of the look on his face, wide-eyed and startled, before he turns and takes off. He’s gone before you can blink, swallowed by the meandering stream of marketgoers.

You stare after him in numb consternation, thinkpan revving uselessly.

“Better holler for the patrocullers, kid.” It’s the slimeslug swindler, shaking his head at your glubcurdling idiocy. “He got ya good he did.”

What the fuck is he talking about… oh. Oh no. No, no no no  _ohnohefuckingdidn’t._ Did he? You pat your pockets. Pat them again. Fondle the ones on your glutes for good measure and he fucking did,  _he did_ , he stole your wallet and you’re going to-

“—fucking wring that grubnugget’s little bobblehead straight of his shoulders and slide his squeal pipette full of my fresh, radioactive hate until he chokes on it.  _DO YOU HEAR ME_?” You scream, shaking with fury. “I WILL SLICE OFF YOUR OILY, MALFORMED HUMAN NETHERS AND SET UP A STALL RIGHT HERE, PANDERING YOUR MALODOROUS GENITALIA SO ALL THESE UGLY FUCKS CAN HUMP THEMSELVES THOSE FINAL PRECIOUS INCHES INTO OBLIVION.”

“Hey now,” the swindler says.

“Fuck you, fuck you with a rusty culling fork I cannot believe you stood there and let him rob me.”

He seems wholly unimpressed with both your plight and temper. “First time to th’ market, ey?”

You stab a finger at him. “Stay. Stay right the fuck there because I’m going to fucking kill that little crotch sniffer and then I’ll be back for you.”

“Aight,” he agrees, easy as you please. “Better up an’ get yer legs marchin’ if you wanna play tag.”

Livid, you storm off, in the approximate direction you think he went. Hope he went. Probably went. Fuck. Oh sweet shrieking Gl'bgolyb, you’re going to kill that fucker, your hemochrome card was in there. The quote-unquote “special” one Sollux made for you so you wouldn’t get your mutant ass culled as soon as you farted loud enough for the drones to smell it. If you get ID’d on the way home you’re grubloaf. Which, of fucking course, is extremely likely as you need to cross into the first precinct. You’re so dead.

Past you is a complete idiot.

As the shadows lengthen and pool between the houses lining the streets, lanterns wink to life. All the colors of the hemospectrum united as paper-encased lights, strung overhead. The dusk market falls apart around you, merchants packing up and hurrying to perform their proper caste-assigned duties. There’s more humans out and about than you’ve ever seen in either of the other two districts and every flash of dark hair and pale skin turns your head, has you ready to charge, but it’s never him.

At midnight, you find yourself as good as alone in the deserted streets, right back where you started and empty handed. To think you ventured all the way to the third precinct to see if you could get your hands on a kaleidoscope. Only humans waste their already short, pointless lives making trinkets for grubs and you wanted to buy one for your moirail so badly.

Instead you got robbed.

Fuck your hot life.

“Still here, huh?”

Tired, you turn to face him, find the street empty. Look up.

There he is, backlighted by a rainbow of lanterns, perched on a stack of crates, crunching an apple. He doffs an imaginary hat at you, grinning.

“If I ever get my hands on you I’ll fucking strangle you.”

“Aw shucks,” he goes, pouting. There’s a smear of powered sugar near the corner of his mouth. At least you know where your boonbucks went. “And here I thought you liked me.” And then he leaps down from the crates, landing with a hollow thud on the filthy cobblestones, right in front of you.

“I could kill you right where you stand and nobody’d care,” you inform him pleasantly, all your fangs on display.

“Very true,” he nods. Cocks his head at you with clinical interest. “Are you going to?”

He’s got nerve, this one. Shit, you… you like it, you like it a lot. You envy it, because he has nothing, yet somehow everything, and it’s all right there standing before you with a droll little smile on his face, scraping the last meat from the apple’s core and waiting for you to do your worst.

And you realize, with a horrified pang, you’re going to do exactly jack fucking shit. Because you like him. You like the thieving shitheel. A lot. Damn it.

Something on his face goes from mischief to some kind of… of wondering comprehension. And when his mouth goes slantwise to crook up into a smile, it’s genuine. It’s real, no act. You think. You hope.

“That was a really nice kiss,” his voice has gone all soft and shy, too sincere suddenly. “Here.”

He tosses you something, and you catch it. Your wallet.

You turn it over between your paws, shaking your head a little. No need to check for your money, it won’t be there, for all he’s showing you that pretty smile. “Wow. Gee. Thanks for returning my empty wallet to me after you robbed me. How thoughtful.”

“Heh,” a rueful huff of sound, barely a laugh. “But I got you something nice to make it up to you.”

When he reaches behind his back your first instinct is to grab him by the throat and crack his skull open on the unforgiving ground -which you don’t, you don’t, even though your hand shot out, you don’t, because his chin comes up and he goes very still and you can see his pulse fucking wave at you from under that damnably fragile skin.

It’s not a weapon. Of course it’s not a weapon. Well. Actually, you’d be less than surprised, with how unpredictable everything about this… this… whatever the fuck this even is has been. But still, not a weapon.

Oh fuck. That bastard. You resist the urge the smack him. Smack yourself instead, clapping your palm to your pan. “Flowers,” you deadpan. “I wonder how you paid for those.”

“Aw, c’mon,” he holds them out to you. “Looksee, they’re kitten lilies, like your name. Karkat, kittykat, crabbykat.”

At ten sweeps you’ve seen a lot of weird shit, but this is really one of the fucking strangest moments yet. You accept the flowers, bought with your own money stolen by the same stranger that kissed you, and still somehow, stupidly, feel flattered. They’re fresh enough they still purr.

“…fuck,” you breathe out, swallowing around the sudden knot in your throat.

“Uhm,” mister pickpocket suggests ever so eloquently. “Maybe. Maybe we could kiss again. Sometime.”

You stare at him, clutching the bouquet to your chest. The lilies mew plaintively. “You robbed me.”

“Only a little.”

“You’ve probably done this to a whole stack of equally moronic losers.”

“Just a few.”

“You really think I’m a goddamn idiot, don’t you?”

He looks at you, almost wistfully. “I promise I won’t steal your wallet. You know. Again.”

“You already took everything,” you point out through gritted teeth.

He makes a ‘there you go’ sort of gesture, eyes bright and amused. Then amends it with a shrug. “I meant like, when you come back.”

You scoff, loud with derision, and take quite some vicious delight from his guilty flinch. “Give me one good reason.”

That uneven smile is back, the real one. “I wasn’t lying earlier you know. I could help you find what you’re looking for. I know a dude who makes real nifty kaleidoscopes.”

And again the “How—“ is out of your mouth before you stop yourself.

“I’ll tell you how,” he promises. The whole hemospectrum is painted across his face in soft, glowing patches. “If you come back.”

It’s not good enough a reason to come back, and you both know it. But you’re going to, and you both know that, too.   
  
  
It wasn’t just your wallet he stole.


End file.
